Kim Seungmin, a sophomore at Seoul Art Academy*, is what you'd call a model student. He makes sure to keep his grades up, teachers love him, he tries his best to participate in class and he often helps his classmates with their homework. Furthermore, thanks to his brilliant profile, teachers have already recommended him as the future student committee president. To back it up even more, he was already the freshman representative for the past year and now the sophomore representative. Even though he still had 2 years to go before actually taking the place of the current president, he had the confidence to do well.
Despite being one of the top students, Seungmin is still a normal boy, with his little group of friends and of course, his own problems. His main problem being, in his opinion, his love interest. He has had his share of confessions and dates but nothing conclusive as his mind is forever stuck on a certain senior year student since the summer of his freshman year.
Kim Seungmin has had a crush on this guy, a senior by two years, and has never thought of confessing his feelings ever as he felt totally invisible for the said guy.
'Invisible' is the term he likes to use to describe his own presence in comparison to others' in general. First of all, his crush is a dance major, and 'dance majors are out of anyone's league' Jeongin, his classmate and one of his best friends often tells him, which the nerdy Seungmin can't help but admit himself. Second of all, the student he fancies is nothing like himself. Popular, flirty, amazing at any sports — although Seungmin himself isn't so bad in this field either — and to top it all, he is gorgeous. For sure Hyunjin, another one of his closest friends who is in the dance course, isn't any less stunning, however his eyes just go to the dancing gem that is this senior year student.
What upsets him — as he believes he has no hope whatsoever — is that this gorgeous dancer is all the other students ever talk about. Even if he tried to give up on his feelings, more than once, he keeps hearing about the popular guy on almost every occasion for as long as he is on school grounds. During lunch, during a break, during class change, during self-study, during sports, in the toilets sometimes, yes, even boys would talk about him. In other words, he is all the school ever talks about and although Seungmin expected himself to grow tired of it all, that only made him even more interested.
Now, what surprised him at first was that all he heard was how nice of a person the popular guy actually was. After a while, he would spot his crush in the middle of the cafeteria even without searching. If he passed a corridor while he was buying juice, he would steal glances at him. However, he would have never expected to end up rushing into him, of all people, making them both fall butt first on the floor, on a Wednesday afternoon of his third week as a sophomore.
"Hey! Are you ok?" The other calls out first, actually showing worry for the model student, even though they don't technically know each other – see that doesn't help the younger one to get over his crush. A few seconds pass and after a few attempts to say something, nothing comes out from his dried-up lips. The vocal major then decides to at least nod and eventually starts picking up his own fallen books. "Let me help. This is partly my fault." says the senior as he proceeds to crouch down to help. The situation was too embarrassing for the younger one to think of anything decent to say at the moment.
Seungmin has been sick for the past week and finally came back after his parents let him, convincing them that he was perfectly fine. He needed to catch up on the classes he missed, which lead him to the library to gather a few books. Of course, as a model student, he has already copied all of Jeongin's notes, he got pictures of his notes sent to him the day before. Nonetheless, he liked to make sure of the accuracy of the facts written in his notes, even for his own. Being the book-worm, he is, the boy didn't choosejust a few of them and ended up picking some for his own enjoyment as well. The school's library had received the latest books of a series he liked, written by an English author.
Since he went to the library during a short break, Seungmin didn't bother taking his book-bag – he always has an additional bag in case he has a lot of books to move around with. The pile of around 10 books wasn't light to begin with. As they were pretty thick too, when he was holding them vertically, he could barely see where he was stepping. Jisung was with him a second ago and said he didn'thave classes for the next period so he planned on staying in the library. Ofcourse, the latter offered to keep a few of his books with him, instead of carrying them all like an 'equilibrist'. However, the stubbornmale refused, as his class was closer to the art building than the library, where he planned on practicing his singing later. As soon as he left the library with his pile of books, he bumped into someone and that someone had to be Lee Minho.
He was pondering on whether he should be regrettinghis choice or be grateful for his own stubbornness when the older spoke upagain: "Why did you borrow so many books at once?". The popular dancer giggles in 'the cutest way ever' ifyou ask Seungmin. "Should I help you carry them to your class?" he says, carrying a few of the books and smiles atthe younger, both standing up now that all the books were picked up from thefloor.
"Oh! No no no! I'm fine! I'm sorry, I wasn't looking." Seungmin finally answers, 'he didn't get hurt right?'. He then realizes he has finally found his way of speech. Not wanting to bother the other any longer, he states, clearly, this time, "You can put these on top of the ones I'm holding. You were going to the library, right?"
Minho raises an eyebrow, "You could bump into someone else on your way. I'll come with you. It isn't heavy, don't worry, I'm only carrying half of it." The older had totally ignored his question but that didn't really matter anyway.
"... Thank you." Seungmin really wished he could have made a better 'first' impression but gives up as his situation wasn't going to get better.
"By the way, I'm Lee Minho." The dancer exclaims, to the younger's surprise. He had assumed the other knew that his name was known by everyone.
"I'm Kim Seungmin." he shyly answers, loud enough for Minho to understand.
"I know, you're head of sophomores this year, right?" The other holds himself from letting out a gasp of surprise, 'He knows me?' he thinks to himself. "I was in the council until last year but I've decided to drop out to focus on my grades. Being the leader of thedance club and also having student council work to handle, it was too much forme" he shrugs then smiles, still looking forward, "Sorry, I'mrambling. You're a vocal major, right? Your class must be here."
"Ah, yes." Seungmin is still trying to process the fact that Minho remembers about him. Of course, he is aware they used to be in the council together but the older even remembered his major, along with that he was so friendly and humble, he even started revealing random information about himself to someone who was nearly a stranger but maybe they weren't really strangers and Seungmin had just been thinking he was on his own. "Thank you so much for helping me out."
"No problem, my friend waiting for me at the library doesn't have a class now either so I'm not in a rush." The dancer carefully places the books he was holding on top of Seungmin's pile while finally answering the question from earlier. "Will you be ok?"
"Yes, thank you." the younger tries to bow slightly, almost dropping his books again but his sunbae** quickly stops the incident from happening.
"This won't do. I'll help you carry them to your seat." For a second Seungmin panics, what would his classmates' reactions be when they see THE Lee Minho helping him carry his books? However, he doesn't have much time to react as the older quickly opens the sliding door and grabs the books he was holding a few seconds ago. "Where do you sit?" the older asks while stepping into the room, nonchalantly.
Seungmin takes a deep breath and joins him inside, most students were already staring at the dancing gem and Jeongin's mouth fell open as soon as he saw his friend. Minho then turns to the younger who quickly realizes that he still hasn't answered his previous question, he would have pointed at his seat if his handsweren't full but that is the case at the moment. So, he quickly moves towards his seat and puts his books down, the older closely following and then passing him the borrowed books. "Thank you so much for helping me." This time Seungmin bows, facing Minho.
"It was nothing, really. See you around then." The dancer flashes him one last smile, which leaves the vocal major almost melting in place but he manages not to and gives him a smile in return, then the gorgeous senior steps out, probably heading to the library.
The entire classroom stays silent for almost an entire minute before Shuhua, usually sitting behind him, rushes to him and asks "Are you friends with Lee Minho Sunbae-nim?".
"No no. He just helped me carry my books." Seungmin quickly corrected, the other students had already gone back to their previous tasks.
"You're getting THE Lee Minho to help you carry your books though." Jeongin jokes, holding in a giggle, before actually letting out a snort at Seungmin's death stare in his direction. If his friend knew about his crush on the senior student, he was sure he would have gotten even more teased about it and right now, he was really glad he has never told anyone about it.
"I made a fool of myself and he helped me because THE Lee Minho is an actually nice and humble person." he retorts.
"Even if someone saw him hugging another student, they'd assume he is just being his usual nice self." Another classmate, Bomin, sits on the chair from the desk in front of Seungmin's, facing the secretly flustered boy.
The girl nods, "Nobody has dirt on him and that's one of the reasons why he is so popular." she adds, putting her bag on her own desk.
"You went out to eat or what?" Bomin casually changes subject and Seungmin mentally thanks him for that, as he would like to avoid having to think about what has just happened.
Shuhua looks up to her classmate sitting across Seungmin's desk and facing her as well. "Well, I was supposed to be modelling this afternoon but my schedule got canceled." she explains with a shrug and the other three nod. "By the way, where is Lua?"
"I think she had a performance with her crew this afternoon. Tag Hyung*** was upset because he couldn't hang out with her." Bomin explains, smiling brightly at the thought.
"He really should just ask her out. Lua literally only has eyes for him anyway." Seungmin states what seems to be obvious to his friends as they all nod in agreement.
Finally, the bell rings and everyone gets to their seat, their teacher already entering the classroom as if he was waiting in front of the door for the bell to ring.
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2022 words
*Seoul Art Academy : I mean, there is SOPA (School Of Performing Arts) in Korea but I don't actually know how it works inside so I'd rather create a school with a basic name for the sake of creating my own scholar system.
**Sunbae(-nim) 선배(님): honorific tittle to address someone higher in the hierarchy (it isn't always decided by age). You can address to someone lower on the hierarchy by Hube 후배.
***Hyung 형: honorific tittle to address to a male older ONLY in case you are a male yourself. It also means 'older brother' ONLY in case you are a male yourself.
A/N :
1993 words, is that long enough for you? Is it too long? Is the general speed of the story ok? Please leave me some feedbacks, it would help me a lot. If you find any grammatical mistakes I'd be grateful if you pointed it out as well!
Thank you for reading this far!
#Levanter <3 : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpgd3ac3_nM
EDIT : 2004 words after some more corrections.
EDIT 20-01-24: 2026 words.
EDIT 20-09-01: 2022 words.